"I'll get you riding," he went on, setting that distinctive hat back on his head, "even if I have to seize the moment and throw you on bareback."
The oxygen in her lungs began to burn. Quizzing his hooded gaze, she knew she wasn't mistaken. He wasn't talking about horses anymore and he wanted her to know it.
"In the meantime-" he offered her his hand "-what say I take you on a tour of Leadeebrook's woolshed."
Her thoughts still on riding bareback, Maddy accepted his hand before she'd thought. The skin on sizzling skin contact ignited a pheromone soaked spark that crackled all the way up her arm. On top of that, he'd pulled too hard. Catapulted into the air, her feet landed far too close to his. Once she'd got her breath and her bearings, her gaze butted with his. The message in his eyes said nothing about awkwardness or caution.
In fact, he looked unnervingly assured.
After a short drive, during which Maddy glued her shoulder to the passenger side to keep some semblance of distance between them, they arrived at a massive wooden structure set in a vast clearing.
"It looks like a ghost town now," Jack said, opening her door. "But when shearing was on, this place was a whirlwind of noise and activity."
Maddy took in the adjacent slow spinning windmill, a wire fence glinting in the distance and felt the cogs of time wind back. As they strolled up a grated ramp, she imagined she heard the commotion of workers amid thousands of sheep getting the excitement of shearing season underway. Sydney kept changing-higher skyscrapers, more traffic, extra tourists-yet the scene she pictured here might have been the same for a hundred years.
When they stepped into the building, Maddy suddenly felt very small and, at the same time, strangely enlivened. She rotated an awe-struck three-sixty. "It's massive."
"Eighty-two meters long, built in 1860 with enough room to accommodate fifty-two blade shearers. Thirty years on, the shed was converted to thirty-six stands of machine shears, powered by steam. Ten manual blade stands were kept, though, to hand shear stud sheep."
"Rams, you mean?"
"Can't risk losing anything valuable if the machinery goes mad."
She downplayed a grin. Typical man.
Their footsteps echoed through lofty rafters, some laced with tangles of cobwebs which muffled the occasional beat of sparrows' wings. Through numerous gaps in the rough side paneling, daylight slanted in, drawing crooked streaks on the raised floor. Dry earth, weathered wood and, beneath that, a smell that reminded her of the livestock pavilion at Sydney's Royal Easter Show.
Maddy pointed out the railed enclosures that took up a stretch of the vast room. "Is that where the sheep line up to have their sweaters taken off?"
He slapped a rail. "Each catching pen holds enough sheep for a two-hour shearing stint. A roustabout'll haul a sheep out of the pen onto a board-" he moved toward a mechanism attached to a long cord-powered shears "-and the shearer handles things from there. Once the fleece is removed, the sheep's popped through a moneybox, where she slides down a shute into a counting pen."
"Moneybox?"
He crossed the floor and clapped a rectangular frame on the wall. "One of these trap doors."
"Must be a cheery job." She mentioned the name of a famous shearing tune, then snapped her fingers in time with part of the chorus and sang, "‘Click, click, click.'"
When his green eyes showed his laughter, a hot knot pulled low at her core and Maddy had to school her features against revealing any hint of the sensation. A wicked smile. A lidded look. Being alone with Jack was never a good idea.
"A great Aussie song," he said, "but unfortunately, not accurate."
Reaching high, he drew a dented tin box off a grimy shelf. Maddy watched, her gaze lapping over the cords in his forearms as he opened the lid. Her heart skipped several beats as her eyes wandered higher to skim over his magnificent shoulders, his incredibly masculine chest. When that burning knot pulled again, she inhaled, forced her gaze away and realized that he'd removed something from the tin-a pair of manual shears, which looked like an extra large pair of very basic scissors.
"A shearer would keep these sharper than a cut throat," he told her. "The idea wasn't to snip or click-" he closed the blades twice quickly to demonstrate "-but to start at a point then glide the blades up through the wool." He slid the shears along through the air.
"Like a dressmaker's scissors on fabric."
"Precisely." He ambled over to a large rectangular table. "The fleece is lain out on one of these wool tables for skirting, when dags and burrs are removed, then it's on to classing."
He found a square of wool in the shears' tin and traced a fingertip up the side of the white fleece. "The finer the wave, or crimp, the better the class."
When he handed over the sample, their hands touched. She took the wool, and as she played with the amazing softness of the fleece, she was certain that a moment ago his fingers had indeed lingered over hers.
"After the wool is classed, it's dropped into its appropriate bin," he went on. "When there's enough of one class, it's pressed into bales. In the beginning, the clip was transported by bullock wagons. From here to the nearest town, Newcastle, was a seven month journey."
Maddy could see Jack Prescott living and flourishing in such a time. He'd have an equally resilient woman by his side. As she gently rubbed the wool, Maddy closed her eyes and saw herself standing beside a nineteenth-century Jack Prescott and his bullock wagons. She quivered at the thought of the figure he would cut in this wilderness. Confident, intense, determined to succeed. That Jack, too, would conquer his environment, including any woman he held close and made love to at night.
Opening her eyes, feelings a little giddy, Maddy brought herself back. She really ought to stay focused.
"What do you plan to do with this place now?" she asked.
He looked around, his jaw tight. "Let it be."
"But it seems such a waste."
"The Australian wool industry hit its peak last century in the early fifties when my grandfather and his father ran the station, but that's over for Leadeebrook." His brows pinched and eyes clouded. "Times change."
And you have to move along with them, she thought, gazing down as she stroked the fleece. Even if your heart and heritage are left behind.
His deep voice, stronger now, echoed through the enormous room. "There's a gala on this weekend."
Her gaze snapped up and, understanding, she smiled. "Oh, that's fine. You go. I'm good to look after Beau."
"You're coming with me."
He was rounding the table, moving toward her, and Maddy's face began to flame.
They were miles from anyone, isolated in a way she'd never been isolated before. No prying eyes or baby cries to interrupt. That didn't make the telltale heat pumping through her veins okay. Didn't make the suggestion simmering in his eyes right either.
What was this? She'd wanted to believe he was a gentleman. An enigma, certainly, but honorable. Yet, here he was, blatantly hitting on her.
She squared her shoulders. "I'm sure your fiancée wouldn't approve of your suggestion."
His advance stopped and his jaw jutted. "I spoke with Tara this morning. I was wrong to consider marrying her. I said we should stay friends."
Maddy's thoughts began to spin. Clearly he'd broken off plans with Tara not only because of their embrace last night but because he had every intention of following that kiss up with another.
Whether he was spoken for or not, it wasn't happening. She hardly knew this man. While she was physically attracted to him-shamefully so-she wasn't even sure she liked him. And if he thought she was the kind to cave to temptation and fall into bed with someone for the hell of it, he was sadly mistaken.
"Jack, if this has anything to do with what happened between us last night … I mean, if you're thinking that maybe-"
"I'm thinking that while you're here, you might as well experience everything there is to offer. This is Beau's new home and you're our guest."